There are no returns, refunds, or exchanges. Cancellations are subject to a 20% cancellation fee, and requests must be submitted in writing via email to ellisonfamilyhomestead@gmail.com more than 5 days before the anticipated pickup/ship date. We are not responsible for how USPS handles the eggs/chicks, and the buyer takes full responsibility for any chicks and/or eggs that are lost in the mail, damaged, arrive late, or deceased. We insure all chicks for the purchase price (minus shipping costs) and priority mail automatically comes with $100 of insurance but the buyer assumes all responsibility for filing an insurance claim with USPS to be reimbursed for losses. We will help by providing shipping receipts if needed. We cannot guarantee that the post office will pay the claim. We recommend taking clear photos from multiple angles of the box with the deceased birds and returning to the post office with the box, deceased chicks, and photo evidence for post office verification and to submit the insurance claim. Shipping is hard on chicks. Temperature fluctuations and rough handling can injure and kill or cause weakness in otherwise healthy chicks. Understand that as a small farm, we are not set up to replace losses or reship for reasons beyond our control. That being said, we will do our best to give hatching eggs and chicks the best chance of arriving intact and healthy by providing proper cushioning, protection, hydration, feed, and heat packs if needed.
We make no guarantees on the fertilization or hatch rate of hatching eggs. We test fertility and hatchability of our breeding pens regularly throughout the season, including before offering any hatching eggs for sale. We get excellent hatch rates from our pens in our GQF Sportsman Incubator. We do not sell any hatching eggs from pens that have a low fertilization rate. You may see different breeds go out of stock throughout the season and this is usually because the fertilization rate in that pen has dropped below 75%. Your hatch rate from our eggs can be anywhere from zero to 100% no matter if the eggs are shipped or not, as hatching is dependent on the type of incubator, hatcher or broody hen used, the ambient temperature and humidity, and handling by the person doing the hatching. If you have eggs shipped, we cannot control what the post office does with the eggs after they have been dropped off at the counter. Rough handling, x-ray, altitude and temperature fluctuations in shipping, and delayed packages can cause eggs to crack, air sacs to detach, or kill the embryo, rendering it nonviable, and therefore, they will not show any development in the incubator. Fertility cannot be confirmed by opening an egg after the egg has been incubated as incubation alters the blastoderm. By purchasing eggs from us, you acknowledge that you have read and understand these facts and accept the risk that you may get a great hatch or none at all. Shipped eggs almost always have a lower hatch rate as compared to eggs picked up locally. No refunds or reships will be given for poor hatch rates.
We make NO GUARANTEES on chicks as to the health, well-being, growth, condition, or egg color a pullet will lay once they have left our hands. Please do your research and have a proper brooder available BEFORE bringing your chicks home. For help and tips for setting up a brooder, refer to our FAQs section of our website. We would never sell anyone a chick that we know is injured, sick, or weak. All breeding birds on our homestead are blood tested for disease. We are NPIP certified and our flocks are inspected by the state of California for health, condition, and biosecurity every year. Diseases can be already present in the environment, be brought by wild birds and rodents, even carried on the wind from nearby flocks and on shoes and clothes if you come into contact with other poultry. 20% of poultry disease outbreaks have been tracked to the tires of vehicles as carriers for bacterial and viral agents. It is important that you make yourself aware of poultry diseases, conditions, and biosecurity protocols to best deal with issues that may arise.
If you order a sexed pullet and the chick grows up to be a cockerel, we will refund you the cost of the sexed pullet chick. A photo or video of the bird in question will be needed as proof of mis-sexing. There are NO GUARANTEES on the sex of straight run chicks. They may end up being 50/50 male/female, all male, all female, or any ratio in between. We will not issue any refunds for chicks sold as straight run due to the sex of the bird. We do not take roosters back due to biosecurity reasons.
We guarantee that the chicks will be of the breed that you ordered. However, we cannot guarantee that any of them will grow up to be show quality, meet the breed standard, or lay the exact desired egg color. There are always variations in every breed and recessive or undesirable traits that may take many generations to show up. There can also be dozens of genes that control each individual trait, like egg color. We are constantly culling and breeding the best of each generation, but we have never seen a perfect specimen of any chicken. They all have flaws. We can make an educated guess on the egg color that a pullet will most likely lay but we can never guarantee 100% that the pullet will grow to lay an exact color. Even two full sibling hens from the same clutch can lay different colors. It is impossible to control all variables of egg color. For example, we only hatch the darkest eggs from our Black Copper Marans dark egg pen. Pullets from these hatches will most likely also lay a dark egg. However, we can never guarantee that they will. Over 2 dozen different genes control egg color. There can be mutations as well as genetics that we cannot identify by looking at a bird. Eggs also change drastically in color depending on the age of the bird and where they are in their laying cycle. Every breeding pen is a work in progress and the work never ends.
Elector PSP, Safeguard Aquasol, chicken stickers, and in stock handmade products have no wait time. Orders of these items ship separately from chicks and hatching eggs. Most orders will be available for pickup or shipped within 1-2 days.
If you do not agree with these terms, do NOT order from us. Placing an order means that you have thoroughly read all of our terms, conditions, and policies and agree to be bound by them.
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